


Our Time Is Now [looking back and unexpected situations]

by alyyks



Series: I Will Know Our Names [1]
Category: The Chronicles of Riddick Series, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Crossover, M/M, POV Shiro (Voltron), Post-Riddick (2013), Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron)'s Missing Year, Shiro (Voltron)-centric, loosely set during Voltron: Legendary Defender Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 17:16:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16044998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: Team Voltron has another intruder in the Castle of Lion—and Shiro has to deal with memories of his missing year and a man he would have never remembered alone.





	Our Time Is Now [looking back and unexpected situations]

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy the ride. Not betaed, pointing at typos and missing words is greatly appreciated.

Six months in, the Castle of Lion still remained something of an unknown entity. After the corruption of the crystal, it had become even more clear that while the ancient alien ship was a safe place to be in—when they were not under attack—it was still ancient and profoundly alien to the humans. Drafts coming from the vents could change at random, the mice had the run of the corridors, there was sometimes a humming noise that was nothing like a human spacecraft humming noise, and the elevators didn’t always work. After Ulaz had managed to infiltrate the Castle without too much difficulty, Coran had reviewed the security measures with all of them and plugged in the holes ten thousand years of slumber and a Blade of Marmora agent had left behind.  
  
Even with that review, Shiro kept a low-level awareness of his space onboard. He was all too aware some days that awareness wasn’t as low level as others’, his nerves jumping and thrumming from phantom events that slipped through his mental fingers. He was all too aware, on another level than the others’, even Allura and Coran, of what space held and hid and could throw at out. He was never truly relaxed, as much as he trained and worked out to attain a state similar to what he had been able to reach with meditation and repeating katas before—before Kerberos, before the holes in his memory, before, always _before_.  
  
That was why his first reflex at sensing someone else, someone who did not belong here in his room, was to attack.  
  
That was how he avoided the blow that came for him in answer to his attack when the door of his bunk closed and plunged the room into darkness.  
  
The second blow, it was avoided by muscle memory, half-glimpsed recollections of ambushes under the arena, his body moving before his mind. Air draft, to his left, behind him—Shiro fell and rolled, putting space between him and whoever was there. No noise, no demand. He blocked another blow with his crossed arms, ignited his arm…  
  
The glimpse of pupil-less reflective silver eyes was like being struck in the face, the memory that rose to Shiro’s mind vivid and elusive at the same time, _the one who didn’t lie_. He gasped, eyes going wide: “Riddick.”  
  
Shiro was turned and slammed against the wall, his breath leaving his lungs in a rush. His right arm was held in such a way he had to turn it off or burn his own neck—Shiro switched it out, the room returning to darkness.  
  
“Looks like you do remember me.” The man held him against the wall effortlessly, power and control in his frame.  
  
“I don’t!” Shiro protested. He knew this man and he didn’t, he knew he could trust him until a certain point and he didn’t, he knew his name and he didn’t. “I don’t remember the arena!”  
  
Shiro felt the man’s face against his neck, heard him breathe against his skin. It both was and wasn’t reassuring; it felt like an assessment, like a greeting, inhuman and familiar.  
  
“You’re not lying,” it was finally decreed. “Shame. We had a good thing going.” The hand holding Shiro’s right arm released him, went lower, caressed his side. The mass of muscles keeping him against the wall shifted, the pressure going from constricting to possessive, a solid thigh slipping between his legs. Shiro felt his breath stop before it came back, short and shallow, heartbeat racing under his ribs.  
  
The one who didn’t lie, the killer, the survivor, released him immediately at this change in breathing patterns, took a step back, another. “You really don’t remember.”  
  
Shiro whirled around, his arm lighted up anew between them, the dim light of it barely enough to see the shape of the room. It was as neat as it ever was: Shiro hadn’t brought anything from Earth other than the clothes on his back, nor did he collect odd and ends in his quarters like Lance and Pidge did.  
  
In front of him was someone he would have taken for a human if Shiro didn’t have the persistent image, without context, of that man facing a nightmare in the sand with his bare hands, the cries of the arena, metal against metal, going head to head with a Galra two heads taller and winning. He was bipedal, about Shiro’s size but broader and more muscled as if used to heavier gravities, bald, silver eyes that would be hidden behind dark googles the minute there would be more light than Shiro’s arm in the room, dark clothes and gleaming knives.  
  
_“It ain't me you gotta worry about. Unlike the creatures out there holding the doors closed, I don’t hunt for sport.” Gleaming eyes. Roughened voice. A certain safety—as long as you weren’t in his way. Sleeping back to back, for warmth, to starve off touch-starvation, to watch their backs._  
  
“Riddick,” Shiro breathed, repeated.  
  
“Champion,” Riddick acknowledged. “But you preferred Shiro.”  
  
“I still do,” he answered, wondering for an instant if what he was seeing was real. “How are you here?” Shiro didn’t often think about the people he had to have met while he was a prisoner of the Galra, while he fought, while he was experimented on. Most of the time he could not even remember more than glimpses. Riddick was not someone he had expected to meet again, had he ever remembered him without seeing him in person. Riddick, in Shiro’s uncertain memories that were trickling in in disjointed images, had been a survivor, was a survivor. Once out, he’d have disappeared into the universe, never to be seen again, never to be caught again.  
  
“Shiro!” Came the cry from outside. That was the rest of his team, probably alerted by the unusual activity. Riddick still stood immobile, still hadn’t answered him.  
  
“Your team?” was the thing he asked instead, hands lowering the dark band of his googles on his face.  
  
Shiro nodded, turned his arm off. The door opened, a rectangle of bright light falling to the floor. Pidge and Keith, the smallest and fastest of them, were in the front with their bayards at the ready, Lance was behind with his rifle in the sniper position, Allura and Hunk were the heavy hitters in reserve in the corridor outside of the room. All were wearing their armors. They froze at the tableau inside, weapons trained immediately on the person they did not recognize.  
  
Shiro held his hands up, faced them—offered his back to Riddick.  
  
“Weapons down everyone, it’s okay.”  
  
“Another Ulaz situation?” Keith asked, sword steadily pointed at Riddick.  
  
“Ulaz?” Riddick asked, head turning to Shiro rather than the team. By the tone of voice, the growled threat, Riddick remembered Ulaz only as the Galra doctor in the arena, didn’t know he had been a spy for the Blade of Marmora.  
  
Shiro glanced at Riddick, hands still up. “He’s the one who got me out, he was a spy.” Riddick didn’t say anything, scowled. To the Paladins, Shiro said, repeated: “Weapons down. Riddick is not,” _a threat, our enemy, going to hurt us,_ none of those applied, “going to fight anyone here.” Unless they gave him reason to, like Shiro reacting to a potential threat waiting in ambush in his space and understandably throwing the first punch. Had Riddick wanted to kill him, Shiro’d be dead, and the thought was strangely comforting. He didn’t say that out loud.  
  
Pidge sniffed, straightened up, her bayard going back to its storage form. “If you think we’re leaving you with Mr Muscle-who-Showed-Up-Uninvited, you got another thing coming.” She took a step to the side, standing next to the door and not in anyone’s way, clearing setting herself to be the last person to leave the room.  
  
Riddick looked at her, head cocked and grin growing. “Cute kid. You collectin’ ‘em all, Shiro?”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
Lance had lowered his bayard and taken a step back in the corridor in the time it took to have that brief conversation. Keith’s bayard had returned to its neutral shape, but Keith was staring at Riddick with the kind of single-minded focus Shiro had only seen from him when he fought down the urge to jump at someone’s throat.  
  
“Let’s go to the lounge,” Shiro said, choosing to literally take the first step and get out of the room. He barely heard Riddick following him.  
  
Allura, standing tall in the corridor, was a little harder to read than Hunk, who was looking and frowning at Riddick like the man was an intriguing piece of engineering, but she did not seem pleased—understandably. It was the second time an intruder walked in without raising the Castle’s alarms; the second time Shiro knew them, too.  
  
“Lounge,” she acquiesced, lips thin. The gaze she was leveling at Riddick was not quite a glare; she was too well composed for glaring.    
  
It wasn’t a long walk to the lounge. It was just long enough for Shiro to wonder anew how he had come to know the man in their midst—and how that same man had tracked them to the Castle and entered without any alarm going off. Coran was probably on the bridge, driving himself mad going through their protocols and where the security breach was coming from this time.  
  
The room was very, very bright.  
  
Allura planted herself tall in front of Riddick, far enough from his reach where he was standing next to the sunken padded bench. Hunk was standing on the raised half of the floor on one side, and so was Lance on the other side. Keith had planted himself next to Shiro, bayard returned to its inactive state and armor storage but his knife in reach at his back. Pidge flanked Allura much like a guard, arms crossed. Shiro, again, was standing the closest to Riddick. At least, unlike when it had been Ulaz there, Riddick’s hands were not tied. Somehow Shiro knew Riddick in cuffs would not have ended well.  
  
_The cuffs were all metal, linked by a chain, unlike the magnetic full forearms one Shiro had seen—and had been in more than once. Riddick used his cuffs to strangle his opponent in the arena, the chain digging until bright orange blood spurted out, using the body as a shield when the sentries came down to drag him back to the cells._  
  
“I am Princess Allura of Altea, and this is our ship, the Castle of Lions. Who are you, Riddick, and how did you came to enter this ship?”  
  
“I’m something of an escape artist. Getting in some place is usually the same, in reverse.”  
  
Shiro kept his eyes on Riddick. The man wasn’t quite facing Allura, instead standing at an angle giving him the widest field of vision, Shiro in the middle of it. By arena rules, by prison and sweat and blood rules that Shiro refused to dig at and examine in the light of day, this was a mark of respect, a sign Riddick thought Shiro a worthy opponent, one to be careful of.  
  
Shiro could answer respect by respect. “You remember me better than I remember you,” he told Riddick, ignoring the glances sent to him by Allura and Keith—at least those were the ones he saw, no doubt the others were looking at him and wondering what he was doing. “The princess introduced herself,” Shiro inclined his head to her. “With us are Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Keith.”  
  
“Voltron all lined up for me,” Riddick said, voice deep and amused when they all, save Shiro, stiffened. He looked at all of them one after the other. “Your faces and descriptions are plastered all over the verse. You need to be blind to miss them. Worse thing, the descriptions of this ship are everywhere.” Riddick turned to Shiro again. “You’re running around with a big fat target on you.”    
  
“I’m touched you care,” Shiro replied. He wished his memories were clearer, more precise. Riddick always had his own agenda—at least that was the idea that kept wriggling in the back of his mind. Mentioning that they were known all over the universe? That was not just empty words, that was a warning.  
  
Riddick smiled at him—a barring of teeth more than an expression of amusement, _danger, danger_. “I’ve done my share of running around with bounties and mercs on my neck. It’s not for everyone.” There was something else in his tone, an implication Shiro could survive that situation the same way Riddick had survived his. This, again, was a mark of respect Shiro could read but could not replace in its context, not entirely.  
  
“Are you here to join our fight, by chance?” Allura asked, and despite the perfect levelness of her voice, it was clear to Shiro she was not expecting a positive answer.  
  
“Not my fight,” Riddick replied coldly, only barely turning to her.  
  
“Not even for the universe?” She insisted.  
  
Riddick was stiff—and not just holding himself still, ready to fight. “Already did my part. It took everyone I knew.” His voice was gravel and low, much lower than until now, emotions clear in his tone.  
  
_Everyone I loved_ , Shiro translated mentally, without quite knowing where that knowledge came from. Since seeing Riddick, he had been off-balance, felt… different. This, now, was the biggest indicator he had _known_ the man, had known him very well—that it hadn’t been just assessing another fighter or knowing prison rules.  
  
“Not to be presumptuous or anything, hi, I'm Hunk, and well, you seem to know Shiro, but we're not really getting the subtext. Where and when did you two meet?”  
  
“The glorious Galra arena,” Riddick pointed at Shiro. “‘S where I met our boy Champion. Your escape made waves, pissed off enough people that it was easier to get out than without it. ‘Appreciate it.”  
  
“So you, what, saw all our faces on a billboard, saw Shiro was alive and decided to come pay a visit?” Lance asked, one eyebrow raised.  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“ _What_ are you?” Keith finally bit out, arms crossed the way they had been since he had placed himself right next to Shiro, hackles raised.  
  
“That's kinda getting personal quick-like, kitten,” Riddick said, the tilt of his head indicating amusement. Keith, next to Shiro, made a noise like a growl, deep in the back of his throat, in response. “You’re twitchy, kitten. Don’t worry, I’m not here to make a move on your man…unless he’s willing.”  
  
“What?!” Keith cried out, and Shiro grabbed him by the arms before he could jump at Riddick’s throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw everyone tense up.  
  
“He’s winding you up on purpose, take a breath,” Shiro told Keith, holding him closer to him. To Riddick, who looked far too amused, Shiro said: “I don’t care how amusing you find it, stop it.”  
  
“Spoilsport,” Riddick smiled at Shiro. “But seriously, kitten,” Riddick turned to Keith again, dark goggles fixed on him, “I’m not here to infringe on your territory. Calm down.”  
  
Keith did not calm down.  
  
“Keith,” Shiro said, in the low tone that usually got Keith to hear him when he was getting himself into a fight. “Keith,” he repeated. Keith stopped straining against his hold, but Shiro kept both hands on him anyway.  
  
Shiro looked at them all, saw the tensions, the uncertainty—and Riddick in the middle, looking at him with a smirk. Yes, like in the room earlier, someone needed to take the first step, to act as the neutral point, and that despite not knowing the full extend of the circumstances that brought the both of them here. He had to trust his guts—and his guts were telling him that Riddick would not shiv him in the back. That would have to be enough.  
  
“Princess,” Shiro said, staying where he was facing Riddick, giving back respect for respect again, “with your authorization, I’d like to deal with the situation on my own.”  
  
“O-oh,” Riddick said, voice gravel-warm, “Taking control, are we? Kinky.” There was no way to figure out if he had added a wink to that, with the goggles in the way. Keith growled, again, tense under Shiro’s hands.  
  
Shiro sent Riddick a flat stare, hoping it would discourage him from more remarks. “I remember you liking to play people against each other quite well,” _even if I don't remember how or when._ “This won’t work.”  
  
“May I speak with you in private, Shiro?” Allura answered. At his quick nod, she turned around and left the lounge without waiting for him.  
  
Shiro squeezed Keith’s shoulders before releasing him, “Hunk, you’re in charge,” then he followed Allura out.  
  
“I’m in charge. Wait, why?” The door closed on the rest of his sentence. Shiro breathed. Out of them all, Hunk was probably the one who would drag Riddick’s attention to himself the least, and react to it the least if not. Pidge, too, but Lance and Keith were not used enough to listen to her in a situation other than a technological problem.  
  
“Shiro, are you sure you want to deal with the situation?” Allura asked him as soon as the door was closed and wouldn’t let any noise through.  
  
Shiro took a breath, tried to appear as confident as he needed to be. “Riddick is—don’t give him a reason to hurt you and he won’t.”  
  
“That still doesn’t sound like a situation I want you in without all the paladins as backup.”  
  
Shiro shook his head. “He’ll keep winding them up. He has a way of getting into people’s heads if you’re not aware he’s doing it.” Again, a half formed memory rose to his mind, vivid alien blood and silver eyes and teeth bared and wary respect.  
  
“And he will not get to you?” She raised an eyebrow, skeptical.  
  
Shiro gathered his thoughts. “I might not…remember what happened clearly; however, the way he was standing in the lounge, the way he was waiting for me—it’s familiar, like I know where I stand with him and him with me.”  
  
“I would, for your safety, prefer you to be accompanied by someone.”  
  
Shiro thought. Riddick was…there was no logical reason for him to be on the Castle of Lion, none. He had tracked them and the ship. His memories of the man, hazy as they were, painted a picture of a man who was the one who didn’t lie, who saw more than anyone else, who always escaped—who never stayed in one place or went back for people without a good reason. What was his interest in infiltrating the Castle of Lions, specifically? Finding Shiro? Shiro doubted that. But the very mention of the Castle, earlier—was Riddick searching for something that only the Castle had?  
  
_“The question ain't ‘What happened?’ The question is ‘What happened to me?’ Why are you here, Champion? To dance with death, all sweet-like, the rush and the blood?”_  
  
_“Don’t call me that.”_  
  
_“Suit yourself. Do yourself a favor, forget being civilized. Only beasts survive.” His teeth flashed, as bright as his eyes. “Would hate to lose my bed warmer.”_  
  
_“I don’t believe that’s all you are.”_  
  
_“Anything else got itself lost—or killed.”_  
  
Riddick hadn’t reacted negatively to Pidge, and she was very good at reading between the lines. If Shiro couldn’t figure the situation out, too mired in his own thoughts, she probably would be able to.  
  
“I’ll take Pidge, and Coran, too, if they are all right with assisting me,” Shiro said, following his guts again. Coran also read people, and much better than the rest of them, from experience both personal and professional—he also had the most knowledge of the galaxy of them all.  
  
“I don’t like this,” Allura said. “Please do let us know the tick you need help. And I would feel better if you were in your armor.”  
  
Shiro glanced down at the same clothes he had been wearing since that morning he had woken up in Keith’s bed, in Keith’s shack, in a desert that had looked like a painted movie backdrop until they had found the Blue Lion and then left Earth behind. The armor would not offer him more coverage or more safety. He did not say that to Allura.  
  
“I think I’ll be fine.”  
  
+  
  
The secondary lounge, which had a technical name Coran had said once and that Shiro’s ears, completely unused to the sounds, had been unable to parse, was much smaller than the main. The sunken couch formed a ring in the floor, surrounding a sort of table and hologram projector that seemed to have come straight out of an old Hollywood space movie.  
  
Shiro walked in first, and lowered the lights until they mimicked an Earth sunset, all warm tones and dim enough Riddick wouldn’t need to keep his goggles on. The observation bay was open, but where the Castle was at the moment, at the Lagrange point between two gas giants and their complex systems of moons, there was barely any light coming from the stars or reflected on to the nearest planets.  
  
Riddick walked in right behind him, taking an instant to assess the room—Shiro wondered what he saw, if he did the same as Shiro now, checking the exit points and all the possibilities of hiding or be stuck by an ambush, if that knowledge for him came from the arena or if it had always been his life—and took his goggles off.  
  
Pidge then came in, Coran right behind her.  
  
“You asked for me, Number One?”  
  
Shiro moved to the ring couch before anyone else could start something, sitting down. It had been a long day, and he had hoped to, if not sleep at least lie down in a quiet room when Riddick had interrupted his plans. He gestured with one hand. “Coran, this is Riddick. Riddick, Coran.”  
  
“And you are the one who slipped through our security system,” Coran said, one arm behind his back, his other hand tugging his mustache. “Coran Hieronymus Wimbleton Smythe, Advisor to the Princess and the Castle’s navigator.”  
  
“Don’t take it personally,” Riddick smiled. “It’s kind of my specialty. Richard B. Riddick. Escaped convict, murderer, former cult leader,” Riddick introduced himself, and Coran blinked.  
  
Riddick took the few steps that separated the door they had come through from the couch, dropped down and sat close enough to Shiro they could knock their knees against each other if they stretched—far enough they could fight without getting in each other’s way.  
  
“So,” Pidge said, choosing to walk around the ring couch and sit down on Shiro’s other side, “Your name’s Riddick, you know Shiro, you were in the arena, you’re clearly not human though you really, really look human and I’d love to have a look at your genetic code because convergent evolution is fascinating, you know who we are because our faces and description of Voltron are everywhere and you broke in the Castle, ostensibly to say hi. Also the murder thing, that’s new. Did I miss anything?”  
  
Riddick turned a little bit, facing Pidge. “I don’t think so.” He sounded almost kind. He had sounded like that before, Shiro mostly remembered, at the youngest beings thrown in the arena. It was never children in the arena—Shiro didn’t want to think about where kids the Galra took were sent, but at least it wasn’t to the slaughter for mass entertainment…but it was probably worse—just younger aliens.  
  
Riddick had always refused to kill them or even fight them. The guards and sentries never could force him; they could beat him within an inch of his life, and often lost too many sentries to it. Shiro suspected Riddick had a kid—or ( _It took everyone I knew._ ) had had a kid, or a sibling, maybe; someone who had looked up to him and who he had loved. Someone who wasn’t there anymore. Shiro clenched his Galra hand absently until the stress on the metal registered as pain.  
  
“Great!” Pidge’s voice cut through Shiro’s thoughts. “Once more, I’m Pidge, please don’t ambush our leader again, we don’t have a spare one if this one gets hurt.”  
  
“He’s pretty good at taking care of himself,” Riddick answered, at the same time Shiro said “Pidge” flatly.  
  
“What’s with the murderer part? And what was that with Keith? Aside from the whole, fake making a move on Shiro,” she continued, gesturing with one hand and completely ignoring Shiro’s interruption.  
  
Riddick glanced at Shiro, silver mirrors meeting his eyes, before looking at Pidge again. Shiro could only imagine why he choose to answer: “I was a soldier. Didn’t like some decision and actions that were made, stopped some people in a very definitive manner, then lots of self-defense—a bit like you lot does, except they kept calling it 'murder' when I did it. Weird how that goes.” That sounded familiar to Shiro, the phrasing of it, not just the ethics of warfare and struggling with the decisions and reactions of battle. He and Pidge—and Lance and Keith and Hunk—had gone through the same classes at the Garrison, the hypothetical ethics of warfare no-one on Earth had ever thought to have to apply in real life, not after World War Three. If Riddick hoped to get into their heads with that, he’d be disappointed.  
  
Oblivious to Shiro’s musings, Riddick continued: “As for the kid, he’s Galra, I’m Furyan. We don’t well with contested territory; it’s the animal in us.”  
  
“Oh dear, a Furyan!” Coran exclaimed, as he continued to walk around the ring couch, seemingly happy with staying up while they sat. “An excellent people, the Furyans—some deemed them a bit too violent, but that is forgetting their strict code of conduct and honor, their bravery and their drive. Why, the thirteenth deep space exploration under King Balafor the Great was captained by a Furyan, not a mean feat at the time.” He tugged at his mustache in a way Shiro had seen before, a gesture that seemed to convey happiness more than the earlier suspicion. “That was pre-Alliance, the space lanes were riddled with pirates and ambushes! A great, lost time.” He nodded at Riddick.  
  
“You know your history,” Riddick said before Coran could continue.  
  
“It’s a hobby of mine! Of course, most of my memories would also be called history by now, what with the ten thousand years nap.”  
  
“Are your records that old too?”  
  
“Much older actually! It’s a point of pride.” Coran straightened up with one hand behind his back. “The whole of altean knowledge, preserved here—and of course, untouched by historical revisionism and purges like the Galra inflicted anywhere else. What might you be looking for?” Coran leaned toward Riddick, arms crossed and expression half suspicious, half excited. It wasn’t often that one of them sought Coran for stories and history. Shiro resolved to seek the advisor and learn more about his universe, later—later, once Riddick’s presence was explained or the man decided to leave, trailing questions in his wake.  
  
“Ancient history. The kind that get erased by the victors.”  
  
“And why should we let you access this information?” Pidge asked, playing devil’s advocate.  
  
“What’s the point of knowledge if it’s not shared?”  
  
Pidge opened her mouth, eyes twinkling behind her glasses with anticipated joy at the debate—Shiro felt bad for interrupting her; interrupting them. Riddick, Coran and Pidge seemed to enjoy this discussion, a lot. But it was late in their cycle, he had too many fragments of memories tugging at him, and he wanted answers.  
  
“Maybe if we could get to the point?” He said.  
  
Riddick made a noise—amusement, Shiro guessed—and turned his head to him. “All work and no fun, Shiro. But suit yourself.” Riddick spreading himself a little more on the couch, claiming territory, however brief that was. “About forty decaphoebs ago, a man who believed himself a god destroyed a world to ensure he’d never be opposed. Sounds familiar, right?” Riddick smirked. “And like in this company, he was sloppy.” He tsked. “Curious what absolute power does to people.”  
  
“I take it that was not Zarkon,” Pidge said, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged comfortably.  
  
Coran sighed, arms crossed. “Alas, even ten thousand decaphoebs ago, there was a disturbing number of individuals and groups who wanted nothing but power over others, and all too often destruction—which is what led in part to the creation of the Lions. Zarkon does not have the monopole of megalomania.”  
  
Riddick assessed him. “You know anything about the Necromongers?”  
  
Coran crossed his arms, one hand to his chin, eyes on the ceiling. “Necromongers, necromongers… no, that does not ring a kloshi.”  
  
“You can add that to your records: they are a death cult who tried to destroy every last Furyan—and a Furyan took their lead.”  
  
“The Furyan in question being you, I take it from the ‘former cult leader.’”  
  
“Yeah. Then we had something of a disagreement over a planet’s location, and when I lifted off from wherever it was they tried to strand me, the Galra took offense at my existing.”  
  
“You’re still beating around the bush,” Shiro told him.  
  
Riddick answered him with a flash of silver eyes, a corner of his lips raised up. “All work and no fun.” He turned back to Coran. “I’m looking for the coordinates of one specific planet, one that was erased out of most databanks and memories by the Necromongers, and by our Galra friends.”  
  
“Making the Castle the last possible place that would have that information,” Pidge concluded.  
  
Riddick gave her a smirk and a flash of silver eyes.  
  
“That should be easy enough to find!” Coran exclaimed, and jumped past the couch to turn the holoprojector on. “There’s a map of the entire known universe in our databanks—one from ten thousand decaphoebs ago, and an updated one. Quite amazing! The Great Leonidas star finally went nova, I think I lost several bets on that.”  
  
The map was a field of blue dots and lines taking space in the whole lounge—expanding like a miniature demonstration of the Big Bang from the projector. Shiro leaned a bit more in the couch, eyes tracking the stars passing him by. The scope alone of the map was humbling: here he was, a tiny human in a universe bigger than his wildest dreams, in space, in an alien starship. It was relaxing, too, the not-quite light from the observation bay and the moving lights and the bone-deep knowledge that the people in this room were safe to be around and would have his back in any situation.  
  
“…iro? Shiro, come on, at least lay down, you’re going to give me neck pain just by seeing you sleep like that,” he heard Pidge say.  
  
“‘m awake,” he replied. He saw the star maps still up, the lights still dimmed, silver eyes.  
  
“C’mon, just like old times,” he heard, rough and low and amused, one warm hand tugging at his shoulder. Shiro followed, rested his head on someone’s thigh—someone who felt and smelled familiar, someone who had his back.  
  
“Wake me up if they take you,” Shiro said, thought he said, words repeated until they were ground in that he would have never have recalled awake. The warm hand was on his head, going from bangs to nape and back. That, too, was familiar.  
  
“No-one’s going anywhere.”

  
+  
  
Riddick stopped moving to his spacecraft at Shiro’s “Hey”, and turned around. He waited until Shiro was only a few steps away from him before moving, coiled power in every movement, taking a step closer than where Shiro had stopped. Shiro stood his ground.  
  
In the half light of the stars shining through the open doors of the hangar and the emergency strip lights, Riddick’s silver eyes shone like twin moons.  
  
“Leaving without saying goodbye?” Shiro said. It wasn’t all he wanted to say, it wasn’t even what he wanted to say; Riddick, leaving like he had come in, leaving him new memories and new questions, leaving him off-balance.  
  
Shiro had woken up in the secondary lounge, Keith sitting opposite from him, idly playing with a tablet. They had let him sleep for hours, almost the full night, first while Coran, Pidge and Riddick continued their conversation and found the information Riddick had boarded them for, then with one person staying with him while Riddick was offered food and the use of the living quarters for rest and refreshment. When Shiro had stretched and attempted to shake off the haze of too much sleep, however needed it was, Keith had told him—through gritted teeth, but Shiro appreciated the effort it had clearly taken for his friend to be in the same room as Riddick while Shiro slept—that Riddick had preferred to come back to the lounge and Shiro rather than use one of the empty rooms, and that he had only left a few minutes ago, ostensibly to leave the Castle.  
  
So Shiro had left the lounge, too, trying to catch up to the man.  
  
“Got told only evil can fight evil once,” Riddick told Shiro, bypassing the small talk entirely. “And they weren’t wrong then. It’s not just evil you’re facing, it’s a whole system of it. You ready to do what needs to be done?”  
  
“I’m not pretending all my actions and decisions are only ‘good.’”  
  
“You were a man ready to go taking as many with you as you could—a man who had someone to protect and was ready to burn to keep the assholes away from them. I can respect that. Not sure you know what kinda man you are now.”  
  
It hit true, fast and deep inside Shiro. Riddick’s words were nothing but the truth, always were—one more memory of the man, slotting back in place.  
  
Shiro took a breath, let it out. “What are you going to do now?”  
  
“Find Furya. Go from there. I was never made for the civilized parts of this universe.” Riddick’s hand was warm on Shiro’s face. Riddick kissed him. Shiro’s eyes closed, his mouth opened with a gasp, a tingle—Riddick kissed like he did everything else, with barely restrained power coiled under his skin, all in the moment.  
  
Shiro raised his hands, one on Riddick’s shoulder, one on his cheek, pressing into the kiss, familiar and unfamiliar at once. He shuddered, felt…desire, wanting to let Riddick touch him more, all over, power and a certain amount of trust erasing touch starvation and remembered nightmares.  
  
Shiro was the one to take a step back. To break the kiss. To open his eyes last.  
  
“Our paths meet again, we should fight.” Riddick was half smiling, a real smile this time, lines at his eyes and silver shining.  
  
“Only fight?” Shiro raised an eyebrow.  
  
Riddick chuckled. “That’s up to you, always has been.” He turned around, walked to his ship, a delicate-looking skiff. Shiro stayed through the preflight check and the engines starting and the ship leaving its space, and then continued to stand his ground. He did not blink until Riddick and his ship had left the Castle entirely.  
  
He stayed in the hangar another half hour after that, trying to put a name on what he was feeling, thinking.  
  
He caught himself rubbing his thumb on his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> I fuck around at [alyyks on tumblr](http://alyyks.tumblr.com/) too.


End file.
